


Mine, Mine, For Ever, Ever Mine

by blanketed_in_stars



Series: 52 Weeks of Wolfstar [43]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1996, Department of Mysteries, Flashbacks, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 12:51:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5128283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mine, Mine, For Ever, Ever Mine

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really, really sorry.

_Bellatrix is grinning at him._

 

He is eight, and Regulus is laughing, his voice a brightness in the darkness that surrounds them. “Catch it,” he cries, “catch it, Sirius!”

Sirius lunges, grabs—and the rat runs across his shoes and into his brother’s hands.

Regulus grins. “It’s ours now!” He deposits the rodent in the pen they’ve made between dusty crates and rotting shelves. “Can we keep it?”

The rat is scurrying around the edges of the pen, searching for an escape that doesn’t exist. “We have to ask Mum,” Sirius says. “Let’s just keep it here for now.”

“All right.” Regulus shuffles a little closer on his knees. “Can we name it, at least?”

Sirius nods. “Let’s call it Squeaker,” he suggests. The rat does make an awful lot of noise.

“I don’t like that,” Regulus says. “What about Death Eater?” He giggles.

Sirius laughs too, feeling a twinge in his belly at those words, that name. It reminds him of silver masks and hissing snakes and the whispers he’s started to hear behind closed doors. “I like Squeaker better.”

“But Death Eater is scarier,” Regulus argues. “It’s a rat. It’s got to be scary.” He leans over the pen and the rat squeals even more frantically. “It’s kind of cute, though—aren’t you, Death Eater?”

“Stop saying that,” Sirius says quickly.

Regulus sits back up and blinks at him. “Why?”

“I don’t—I don’t know,” he replies, no less frightened, but sorry for snapping. “I just don’t like it. I don’t think we should say it.” He glances around at the shadows. “It’s not a nice name.”

“It’s not supposed to be nice,” Regulus complains, but he doesn’t say it again. After a moment he sighs. “I don’t want to play with it anymore,” he says.

Sirius helps him move the crates aside, and the rat goes streaking into the dark that swallows it up.

“Sirius,” Regulus says, shifting a chair so that he can walk, “what _are_ Death Eaters?”

The hairs prickle on the back of Sirius’s neck. “Dunno,” he says again. “Don’t worry about them, Reg. Let’s go or we’ll be late for lunch.”

They leave the rat, and the darkness, in the cellar where they belong, trading them in for a different kind of gloom. But Regulus, following close behind Sirius, chatters enough that the sun seems to shine indoors, and the only trace of the black is the dust on their knees.

 

_There is only so much room in this old, tired body for fear, Sirius thinks, and he laughs as he ducks. “Come on,” he yells, “you can do better than that!”_

 

He is twelve, and April sunlight warms his shoulders as it cuts through the dormitory windows. It’s a Monday, and almost time for Potions, and they really do need to get moving—but something tells Sirius that they won’t be seeing Professor Slughorn today. “Remus,” he says, “wake up.”

Remus moans and pulls a pillow over his head.

“How’s your mum?” Peter asks from the other side of the room, where he and James are waiting.

“All right,” Remus mumbles, as they knew he would. He lets Sirius remove the pillow. “What time is it?”

“Nearly nine. Don’t worry about breakfast, we saved you some. Get _up.”_

Sitting up slowly, Remus rubs at his face with both hands. He is very pale. When he looks around to see them all watching him, he turns paler. “What’s going on? Have you put something in my bed?” He springs out from under the covers at top speed, then clutches at the bedside table to keep his balance.

“Steady on,” Sirius says, and reaches out—but Remus waves him away. “We haven’t done anything,” Sirius promises. “We just want to talk to you.”

Remus glances at all three of them. “About what?” His voice is wary.

Sirius wants to tell him not to worry, but then he notices. “You’re bleeding!”

“I’m not—oh!” Remus claps a hand to the cut on his side, which looks both old and angry at the same time. He hisses, but just reaches for his robe and wraps it tightly around himself. “It’s nothing,” he tells them.

“Remus…” There’s no easy way to say this, and Sirius silently curses James and Peter for giving him the job. He bites his lip. “We know.”

Impossibly, Remus’s face goes even whiter. “Know what?” he asks, only a moment too late, only slightly too high.

“That you’re a werewolf,” Peter bursts out. Sirius turns and glares at him.

“I’m—I’m not a—” Remus starts.

James cuts in with his usual excitement at the solution to a mystery. “You’re always visiting your mum, but it’s only on full moons. And you’re always tired, and sometimes you have—well.” He gestures to the hidden cut. _“And_ you’ve got scars. We’ve seen them.”

Remus’s gaze darts from one to the other. “Lots of people have scars.”

“Not ones that look fresh every month.”

Appearing terrified, and trembling very slightly from his head to his stockinged feet, Remus stares at them. “You can’t tell,” he whispers at last.

“Merlin’s beard, we’re not _stupid,”_ Sirius says. He regrets it immediately. “Look, Remus, it’s not a problem—we won’t tell anyone.”

Remus nods and sits on the edge of his bed. “What _will_ you do?” he asks. “Now that you know?”

There are several moments of silence in which Sirius ponders that question. He hasn’t yet asked it of himself. It’s Peter who comes to the rescue. “We’ll help you,” he says, simply, easily.

Sirius doesn’t miss the way Remus’s eyes go wide, or the tightening of his fingers on his robe, or even the sound he makes when his breath hitches. “Yeah,” he agrees. “We’ll—”

“We’ll make hot chocolate,” James supplies eagerly. “That helps with everything.”

“Yeah,” Sirius says again, and because he’s closer he can see that Remus is crying. Hesitantly—this is awkward, it is very awkward, he knows it in every part of his twelve-year-old-boy’s brain—he sits on the bed beside him. “We’re still your friends,” he says. “You don’t need to hide anymore.”

Remus sniffs, and smiles.

 

_With the heat of the duel thrumming through his veins, he feels more alive than he has in months, years—all of his wasted life raging inside him, focusing on the woman laughing right back at him, raising her wand._

 

He is fourteen, and he feels as though he has been hit in the head with a ten-ton weight that reads _Remus Lupin._ The mandrake leaf tastes disgusting, so he spits it out and tries to act as if his ears aren’t ringing with the force of the blow.

“On the carpet, really?” The ten-ton weight shakes his head and eyes the spitty glob with distaste. “That’s disgusting.”

“You won’t say that when I’m a Hungarian Horntail with teeth as long as your arm.”

“No,” Remus agrees, “I’ll say, ‘Oh my god, look at that huge beast that can’t stop chasing its own tail.’”

“We’ll all be chasing _your_ tail, actually, raving lunatic that you are—oh, that’s a good one, write that down—so don’t poke fun.”

Remus, seemingly out of habit, glances around the empty common room. His eyes are bloodshot with the lateness of the hour, and he has ink on his left cheek, and Sirius can’t stop staring at him. “What are you looking at?”

“You’ve got ink on your face.” Sirius watches as he scrubs it off, and suffers another invisible concussion when Remus looks at his essay and moans.

“I will never understand Vanishing Charms,” he announces. “They ought to vanish themselves and let me sleep.” He yawns.

Sirius follows suit. “Let’s just go to bed, then. You’ll do better tomorrow anyways.”

 _“You_ won’t.” Remus glances pointedly at the mandrake leaf. “James will literally kill you.”

“Nah,” Sirius says, nudging the leaf out of sight beneath the table. “He could never bring himself to leave a mark on my beautiful face.” He leans very close to Remus, who leans as far away as his chair will allow. “Look, Remus. Who would touch this stunning, gorgeous—”

“—grotesque—”

“— _awe-inspiring_ face? Tell me you’ll protect me if James loses his mind and tries something.”

Remus plants his hand firmly over Sirius’s entire face and shoves him away. “Just hide behind Peter like last time.” He stands up.

“Bed?” Sirius asks.

“Bed.” Remus rolls his parchment and puts it in his bag, and then he stretches, and the hem of his shirt lifts to reveal a strip of skin.

Sirius quickly bends down to retrieve the leaf and knocks his head on the table. When he surfaces, face red and nose aching, he shoves the wet, slimy thing in the bin. Remus. “Look!”

Remus backs away rather hastily and disappears up the stairs to the dormitory. Sirius stays where he is, embarrassed and tired and thrilled, and that ten-ton weight swings his way again.

 

_Bellatrix doesn’t speak, but the red light sears his eyes and he feels the heat of the spell’s passage in the air, even before he feels it hit._

 

He is eighteen and the little cottage is something he has never known.

“What do you think?” Remus asks, standing next to him.

They both survey the room for a few minutes. At last Sirius says, “I think I could live here.”

“Oh?” Remus turns to him. “No need to sound so eager.”

Sirius catches his hands and holds them. “It’s very nice,” he says truthfully. And it is. “I’m just not used to it yet.”

“Well, it’s only been a few hours,” Remus allows. He sighs and hugs Sirius, resting his head on his shoulder.

Sirius hugs back, and looks over Remus’s shoulder at the room, with its secondhand armchair and deformed sofa. He looks at the picture fixed to the wall with a Sticking Charm, the one James took at graduation, and which they will probably put somewhere less obvious tomorrow but which is at the moment a claim, saying: we live here, this is ours. He looks at the yellow lampshade waiting to be hung, at the blue tea kettle sitting on top of one of the many boxes, at the way the sunlight throws its angles across the walls.

He presses a kiss into Remus’s cheek. “I think this could be home.”

 

_But hit it does, directly over his heart._

 

He is twenty-two by only a few hours and shivering. He has been shivering for forty-eight hours and won’t stop for another twelve years. The rocks are, predictably, hard against his back, but they are also slimy and that’s worse.

The sea beats a crashing tempo in his skull. He closes his eyes against it and sees James’s cracked glasses, Lily’s fiery hair, and the moon hanging where the bedroom used to be.

The view from his window yields only a rocky yard and dark water, beneath which he imagines there are foul things lurking, but not half so foul as what’s in his head. An empty flat. Swirling leaves.

And then the wall he’s been carefully building comes tumbling down. Memories flood him—Remus reading, Remus in the bleak dawn, Remus wearing red-and-gold face paint, Remus with his face flushed and his eyes glassy, Remus laughing, Remus happy—

The Dementors drift away when the rush eases, and Sirius is left to tip his head back against the wet stones, a compass with no needle, alone, lost.

 

_The impact is painless, but he feels it in every bone of his body, a subtle shift that he can’t quite put a finger on—_

 

He is twenty-nine, with the memories slowly ebbing out of him, and he can’t remember what it is to be held. He knows there was someone, once, who would hold him, even remembers that person’s name, but arms around his shoulders and fingers in his hair and the feeling of a warm body against his—all of that is gone.

So is the sound of laughter, although he knows he heard it once, and the precise deep green that he used to gaze into. The only things he remembers are the fear and the sound of a baby crying—and all he feels now is cold.

 

_—but the force of the spell is what knocks him backwards, and something cold brushes his arm, outstretched behind him, reaching—_

 

—for Remus, as Remus reaches for him, after thirteen years, and they fall together and his heart starts up its old rhythm again. He falls—

 

_—further and feels the cold steal over more of his skin, hears the whispering grow louder, tries—_

 

—to open his eyes and fails, miserably tired. Remus’s lips brush his own and Sirius murmurs something inaudible. “Speak up,” Remus says, “I can’t hear—”

 

_—anything, all the noise is fading, there is only—_

 

—the way he smiles, the way his hair sticks up in the morning, the way his voice trembles and grows strong again, the way he gazes—

 

_—but sees nothing except silvery whiteness, and he feels afraid, and he wants—_

 

—Remus to know, he loves—

 

_—him, he will always lo—_

**Author's Note:**

> "Abiding with me till I sail  
> To seek thee on the mystic deeps,  
> And this electric force, that keeps  
> A thousand pulses dancing, fail.
> 
> Known and unknown; human, divine;  
> Sweet human hand and lips and eye;  
> Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,  
> Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine…
> 
> Thy voice is on the rolling air;  
> I hear thee where the waters run;  
> Thou standest in the rising sun,  
> And in the setting thou art fair…
> 
> But they must go, the time draws on,  
> And those white-favour'd horses wait;  
> They rise, but linger; it is late,  
> Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone..."
> 
>  
> 
>      — _In Memoriam_ by Alfred Tennyson


End file.
